Canada 2011 Official Thread

[Dan the Roman]

You missed the best part - EKOS's seat projection based on that poll.

Conservative 131 + Arthur, Liberal 62, NDP 100, Bloc 14

You must be logged in to read this quote.

EKOS queries the Green Party in their polls, which always inflate their votes and steals others. It also has a reputation for outlier polls, and Graves gets hit with being a "Liberal" pollster every now and then. It's not as if they haven't shown huge leads for the Conservatives before, though

Ekos for the last few weeks has been quite hackish. They have three times released mid-week "preview" polls with the Conservatives under-performing, usually in the 33-34%, and then release their final polls on Fridays, which almost always have the Tories back up to at least 36-37%.  Its clearly an effort to grab media attention and then backtrack so as to avoid being called on their numbers.

This looks par for course for an Ekos preview release. I am sure they will hedge their bets and we will get another Ekos before the end of the week with numbers like this:

Con 36
NDP 25
Liberals 24

[Dan the Roman]

Is Ignatieff himself in trouble at all? He doesn't have that safe a seat.

[Dan the Roman]

I am going to go out and make a prediction, that the Tories will massively outperform polls on Monday.

Why? The NDP is peaking several days too soon. The narrative at the end of this week will shift from Jack Layton as leader of the opposition to Jack Layton as a potential PM, and despite what some NDP supporters may think, that is a prospect that terrifies 60% of Canadians. When Newspapers start to run with it later this week, you are going to see two things:

1. Centrist Liberal voters voting strategically for the Tories
2. Soft-NDP supporters deserting as they learn more about the platform, and read the slew of stories about lunatic NDP paper candidates that are going to dominate media coverage for the rest of the week.

This is what happened to the Liberal Democrats to an extent, but here it will be far worse. NDP government has a disastrous record in the key swing areas(BC, Ontario), and a large portion of the likely NDP MPs are paper candidates, separatists, crazies, or all three.

People may be ready for an NDP opposition. They clearly are ready to dump the Liberals. But I doubt they really want an NDP government, and if polls in the next few days show them close to the Tories, its the worst thing that could happen to the NDP.

[Dan the Roman]

I am going to go out and make a prediction, that the Tories will massively outperform polls on Monday.

Why? The NDP is peaking several days too soon. The narrative at the end of this week will shift from Jack Layton as leader of the opposition to Jack Layton as a potential PM, and despite what some NDP supporters may think, that is a prospect that terrifies 60% of Canadians. When Newspapers start to run with it later this week, you are going to see two things:

60%? um, no. 54% of Canadians either have the NDP as their #1 preference or #2 preference. That means at the most 46% are scared of Layton as being PM, the lowest of all the parties.

Thats because they are thinking of them as a nice party they want to see more of. Their preferences for whether or not they want them as a government may well be different. There are plenty of people who may want to take a chance on Layton being LO, but will get terrified of the extent of NDP inexperience.

---quoting fixed by boardbashi---

[Dan the Roman]

So, supposing the Tories come out of this election with another minority government (reduced or not)...which also supposes no NDP-Liberal coalition...

How long does this government last?  I mean...wouldn't the liberals be hesitant to give the NDP another opportunity so soon to cement themselves as the natural tory alternative?

Best case for the Tories is that the NDP/Bloc/Liberals vote down the throne speech, despite the Tories being the largest party, and form an NDP minority. Layton will have to scrape the floor to come up with Ministers, especially if the Liberals decline to participate, the markets will panic, and scandals and gaffes will plague the government for its likely sub-18 month tenure. Then everyone goes back to the polls and its Tory majority.

[Dan the Roman]

Today's Nanos.

Conservative - 36.4 (-0.2)     
NDP - 31.2 (+0.    
Liberal - 22.0 (+0.1)    
BQ - 5.7 (-0.3)    
Green - 4.0 (-0.1)

http://www.nanosresearch.com/election2011/20110428-BallotE.pdf

With the royal wedding, and then the weekend, there's probably not going to much much change.

(fwiw, Nanos shows Tories down to 36% in Ontario, although I wouldn't read too much into it, they have Liberals winning the Atlantic by 6%, small subsamples etc etc. There seem to be massive swings in every province/region every day and big MoE's anyway.)

I wish there'd be a poll of BC before election day though, seems like it might be tightening according to Nanos, but small sample. Also seems the Tories are recovering in the Prairies, I wonder if that'll affect gains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Worth noting that the CPC was at 48% two days ago, 41% yesterday, and 36% today. That indicates a very very poor CPC sample on Tuesday, probably similar to the Harris Decima one, a better one(but still probably below 40% on Wednesday, and a better one on Thursday, due to Monday's very positive(51%+) sample falling off.

And I apologize for anti-NDP sentiment. Just not a big fan of fads. While I would enjoy them doing well, the prospect of them winning is quite terrifying.

[Dan the Roman]

Harper seems to be positioning himself for a coalition with the party which he spent years accusing of lusting for power via undemocratic coalition. How appropriate.

The Liberals shoot themselves in the foot a lot, but that would be more like shooting themselves in the head.

Let's look at the options the Liberals have, once they're trounced into third place and they hold the balance of power in a hung parliament:

1) Liberals forced to humiliatingly prop up Conservative confidence motions while their leadership candidates make anti-Harper rhetoric

2) Harper decides to kill the Liberals once and for all by offering goodies to a certain number of centrist Liberal MPs even when (what's left of) the Liberal leadership opposes them

3) NDP-led, Liberal supported coalition takes power, and within months the Liberals act like a jilted wife in a forced marriage; the Liberals get destroyed from the left if the NDP governs well or from the right if the NDP governs like Bob Rae

Realistically the only way the Liberals are going to survive in the long term is if they can afford to posture and make principled stands while cleaning out all Chretien/Martin flunkies, which depends on the Conservative Party winning a majority, which itself seems shaky.

Basically, whoever the next Liberal leader is, they shouldn't become a Canadian Nick Clegg.

No, they should let the NDP form a government, and trigger an election when the government hits its first term blues. Its true the Tories wills stomp, but all that is important is that Liberals retake the official opposition. So if they are smart they wait a few months before knifing Iggy, and force an election of opportunity in partnership with Harper and the Bloc if there is an NDP minority. Everyone would have something to gain.

[Dan the Roman]

Basically, whoever the next Liberal leader is, they shouldn't become a Canadian Nick Clegg.

No, they should let the NDP form a government, and trigger an election when the government hits its first term blues. Its true the Tories wills stomp, but all that is important is that Liberals retake the official opposition. So if they are smart they wait a few months before knifing Iggy, and force an election of opportunity in partnership with Harper and the Bloc if there is an NDP minority. Everyone would have something to gain.

I appreciate your constant assertion that the NDP would be complete and utter catastrophe and incompetence in every conceivable way from Day 1, but that sort of immediate short term partisan strategy doesn't solve the problem the Liberals have been dealing with for several election cycles now. The Liberals aren't very used to dealing with the NDP in the position it's in now, and the Liberals have been slowly bleeding support for several years. People don't seem to see any reason to vote for the Liberals anymore.

The Liberal campaign this cycle has boiled down to Ignatieff being incredibly snotty and entitled. Ask him why people should vote for the Liberals, and he'll just respond with "because we're the Liberal Party." Well that doesn't seem to be good enough at this point anymore, especially with a much more noticeable left-wing alternative in the mainstream at the moment.

With Conservatives, you know roughly what you're getting. Layton is the most explicitly issues-focused of all three of them. Layton is giving people reasons to vote for the NDP. The Liberals haven't been able to do that at all.

Your strategy is a good one, I guess, if we go along with your assertion that the NDP is hopelessly incompetent and doomed from the minute they take any sort of power on the federal level (which I think is an incredibly stupid and presumptuous thing to assume before the election has even taken place) but it still doesn't solve the larger problem aside from the Liberals saying "we're not the other guy, we should govern because we're Liberals!"

It may give them one more opportunity to differentiate themselves, but the Liberals have given basically no indication at all that they know how to do that or what they want to differentiate themselves as.

Love them or hate them, the NDP is actually explaining what they are and what they want to do, and giving people a reasonable idea of what you get for an NDP vote. And whaddya know? People seem to be receptive to that.

Of course the NDP could succeed, but if they do, in either a governmental or opposition capacity, the Liberals are doomed in any case. I was just positing that the current status of the NDP as a major party is only three weeks old, and that the Liberals have an incentive not allow the next Parliament to live out its natural life if they come third, especially if the polls are much more favorable to them than they are now.

[Dan the Roman]

It seems like the NDP and Liberals have key policy differences that would prevent a merger.

Which are what, exactly? Most of the difference between them is just a matter of priority and how far they're willing to take certain policies. Liberals wanted to raise the corporate tax rate, NDP agreed, but wanted to raise it more than the Liberals did. The Liberals proposed a large credit for people caring for their ailing parents, the NDP agreed, but wanted to provide more than the Liberals did. The Liberals want out of Afghanistan soon, but are willing to stall on it, while the NDP wants out immediately.

Alot of that is really the main difference.

Montreal Anglophones will not vote for the same party as soft nationalists long-range. The disappearance of the remaining Liberal rump in that Province would almost entirely result in them going Tory, since they are not voting Liberal for purely policy reasons.

I also think the Atlantic support would split pretty evenly, especially if Harper was succeeded by someone like John Baird. The fact is that the NDP is culturally a bad fit. Its not that its Quebec caucus is made up of students, activists, and randoms, its that the party as a whole is identified with groups that a lot of the Liberal electorate does not want representing them even if they agree with them politically. If the Liberals and NDP were to merge while the NDP is artificially inflated by their Quebec win, a party of professionals would be replaced in the Toronto suburbs with a party of inner city activists, and that would be devastating.

This is not to say a merger should not happen. But it should not be a merger into the NDP. I have serious doubts that the NDP could ever win a 1-1 national election against the Tories in any circumstances. So a merged party would have to maintain the Liberal's respectability, something that is not possible until the current NDP caucus sorts itself out.

[Dan the Roman]

So, at the risk of jumping the gun, is the NDP seriously a government-in-waiting?

Nowhere near to the degree its boosters are claiming. Right now its total is artificially inflated by winning 60 seats in Quebec, and given some of the candidates who won, it might be wise to say the extent of that win may be on borrowed time.

Outside of Quebec it went up from 36 to 43 seats, not really a large gain compared to the Conservative gain of 29 seats. And while they lost some close races in BC, the number of targets for them is probably not high enough to get them near a majority. I mean the Liberals were already pretty non-existent in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and large parts of BC this time, so thats not their problem, and remain skeptical of their ability to win ridings that went something like this in Ontario:

Con 44
Lib  29
NDP 26

Quite simply even with a merger they would need such a high proportion of the Liberal vote, which is hard for them.

This is not to say that they can't win at some point, but I would say right now that they are a much lesser threat to the Tories in 2015 than the Liberals would be if the seat tally between the two parties had been reversed, or even as the Liberals were going into this election.

[Dan the Roman]

It seems like the NDP and Liberals have key policy differences that would prevent a merger.

Which are what, exactly? Most of the difference between them is just a matter of priority and how far they're willing to take certain policies. Liberals wanted to raise the corporate tax rate, NDP agreed, but wanted to raise it more than the Liberals did. The Liberals proposed a large credit for people caring for their ailing parents, the NDP agreed, but wanted to provide more than the Liberals did. The Liberals want out of Afghanistan soon, but are willing to stall on it, while the NDP wants out immediately.

Alot of that is really the main difference.

Montreal Anglophones will not vote for the same party as soft nationalists long-range. The disappearance of the remaining Liberal rump in that Province would almost entirely result in them going Tory, since they are not voting Liberal for purely policy reasons.

I also think the Atlantic support would split pretty evenly, especially if Harper was succeeded by someone like John Baird. The fact is that the NDP is culturally a bad fit. Its not that its Quebec caucus is made up of students, activists, and randoms, its that the party as a whole is identified with groups that a lot of the Liberal electorate does not want representing them even if they agree with them politically. If the Liberals and NDP were to merge while the NDP is artificially inflated by their Quebec win, a party of professionals would be replaced in the Toronto suburbs with a party of inner city activists, and that would be devastating.

This is not to say a merger should not happen. But it should not be a merger into the NDP. I have serious doubts that the NDP could ever win a 1-1 national election against the Tories in any circumstances. So a merged party would have to maintain the Liberal's respectability, something that is not possible until the current NDP caucus sorts itself out.

I can certainly see alot of cultural and regional issues involved in a possible merger (though I still think some sort of NDP-Liberal unity play is necessary at this point if they want to take back power) but I was just responding to a point he made about policy differences specifically.

Though, the Liberal Party's "respectability" lately..

A lot is speculation.

I think a party with the NDP's views/policies and the Liberal's type of candidates and professional support base would do very well. I just doubt such an entity could be created right now, though I suspect it would Layton's first choice.

[Dan the Roman]

Would a merger even be necessary? Maybe an understanding like the Liberal/Nationals in Australia would be a better fit...

Well that would be the blowback from Harper scrapping the per-vote subsidy. Right now it means that parties try and run at least paper candidates everywhere. Getting rid of it might force economizing on the part of the Liberals and NDP which would probably be far worse for the Tories than keeping the subsidy.

[Dan the Roman]

The fact is that the NDP is culturally a bad fit. Its not that its Quebec caucus is made up of students, activists, and randoms, its that the party as a whole is identified with groups that a lot of the Liberal electorate does not want representing them even if they agree with them politically. If the Liberals and NDP were to merge while the NDP is artificially inflated by their Quebec win, a party of professionals would be replaced in the Toronto suburbs with a party of inner city activists, and that would be devastating.

Well, if you believe Compas' polling, the NDP itself has been attracting a more educated base than in the past and is less reliant on students, activists and randoms than most think.  That said, there definitely would be blue Liberals who would switch to the Tories should the NDP and Liberals merge, just as some red Tories switched to the Liberals after the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Reform Party to form the current Conservative Party of Canada.

But will they stay? The Tories are going to begin hitting the NDP in the next few months, not least because being on the attack 24/7 worked. The attacks will focus on their Quebec caucus, and once the public has its fill of 19 year old MPs collecting $157,000, one's who don't show for work/didn't campaign, secret separatists, I expect the NDP's image to take a bit of a hit in those sectors. If I were Layton, I would restrict interviews with my new MPs for the next six months or so until they can be coached.

The problem though with responding to this line of attack is that it is both true and interesting, and therefore the media will chase these MPs around.

[Dan the Roman]

According to the news, Liberals and Conservatives are contesting the election of Ruth Ellen Brosseau (NDP) in Berthier-Maskinongé.

According to them, the candidate form isn't legally filled.
Some people who signed don't remember it and some are saying they thought they were signing a petition.

Stupid, stupid. The woman is a walking disaster. They really should hope to keep her in Ottawa as long as possible.

[Dan the Roman]

According to the news, Liberals and Conservatives are contesting the election of Ruth Ellen Brosseau (NDP) in Berthier-Maskinongé.

According to them, the candidate form isn't legally filled.
Some people who signed don't remember it and some are saying they thought they were signing a petition.

Stupid, stupid. The woman is a walking disaster. They really should hope to keep her in Ottawa as long as possible.

The woman was living in Ottawa, so, she wasn't involved in the signatures.

I heard that may not have been the legal response to give about the signatures?

[Dan the Roman]

According to the news, Liberals and Conservatives are contesting the election of Ruth Ellen Brosseau (NDP) in Berthier-Maskinongé.

According to them, the candidate form isn't legally filled.
Some people who signed don't remember it and some are saying they thought they were signing a petition.

Stupid, stupid. The woman is a walking disaster. They really should hope to keep her in Ottawa as long as possible.

The woman was living in Ottawa, so, she wasn't involved in the signatures.

I heard that may not have been the legal response to give about the signatures?

That was an answer to the comment than the woman was a disaster, not about the signatures.

My comment about her being one had to due with her potential future usefulness to the Conservative Party of Canada.